Wordsworth Motives

            In a “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” Wordsworth makes a constant effort to emphasize the equality between his writing and the language of men. Although he does discuss several other points, he tends to cycle back to the idea of him, a poet, being merely a man speaking to man. (299). He goes as far as to tell the reader that personification was not used in his Lyrical Ballads because it is “an ordinary device, [used] to elevate the style and raise it above prose.” (297). After utterly rejecting personification as an elevated poetic device, he says “my purpose was to imitate, and, as far as possible, adopt the very language of men.”(297).

           The previous quote directly contradicts his claim to be a merely a man speaking to men because he states that he made an effort to adopt the language of men, rather than being a man whom already spoke the language of men. I found that in most of the preface, Wordsworth contradicts himself in this way in order to gain his audience's trust.

            For me, his technique to attempt a sort of allegiance or “equality” with real men came off as condescending. When Wordsworth says that a poet is a man speaking to men, he follows this claim by saying that poets are men speaking to men but they simply have more passionate thoughts, more knowledge about nature, more enthusiasm, and a man “who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him.”(299). Almost immediately he contradicts himself by placing the inner thoughts and knowledge of poets above common men.

             It is also important to note that Wordsworth is defining poets as he himself perceives them, and therefore, he is discussing himself as a poet without directly saying he is talking about himself. Again, I felt this was condescending and also a way of deceiving the reader into a feeling of false equality with Wordsworth.

              After reading “Tintern Abbey” I again felt that Wordsworth came off as condescending. Although I do appreciate the poem's ability to show Wordsworth's childhood self, present self, and future (dead) self, Wordsworth discusses his past self by discussing how he is above the childish ideas he had once. He takes this a step further when he studies his sister and compares her to him when he was a child. He says that presently, she is just like he was as a child, which he previously described as someone who did not think much or at all and someone who doesn't absorb the environment he often was in.